


Breaking

by ash_carpenter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash_carpenter/pseuds/ash_carpenter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then one day, a day no more special than any other, when Alastair had his small intestine in one hand, and the other buried in his chest cavity, the question had come and he’d hesitated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking

_I’ll see you in Hell._ Dean Winchester, 3x15: Time Is On My Side

_Every night, the same offer, remember? Same as your father. And finally you said, "Sign me up." Oh, the first time you picked up my razor, the first time you sliced into that weeping bitch... That was the first seal._ Alastair, 4x16: On The Head Of A Pin

 

**Breaking**

 

He was close to saying yes, so fucking close. He’d hesitated the last couple of times and Alastair had seen it. A few days ago – well, a few sessions on the rack ago; that was the only way to measure the concept of ‘days’ in Hell – he’d actually allowed himself to be taken away from the torture and shown what his future might hold.

After seeing the guy stretched out, crying and afraid, all pristine and waiting to be torn to pieces, he’d backed away, shaking, and demanded to be put back on the rack.

But it had been close. He’d almost picked up that knife.

He didn’t know exactly what had changed thirty years in. He’d thought that he’d settled into some kind of routine, but Hell didn’t really work like that. Every day was brand new. He supposed that it had crept up on him little by little, wearing him down imperceptibly. Water and wind can erode granite, given enough time.

Of course, Alastair had also been getting better over the years. Naturally, he’d quickly discovered what Dean found the most painful and violating, and he’d had a few quick psychological wins with John and self-worth. But it had taken _years_ for him to understand how to use Sam as a weapon. 

He’d tried the obvious, like demons impersonating Sam as they tore into him, or telling Dean that Sam was doing just fine without him, that a burden had been lifted. But nothing could ever impersonate Sam well enough for Dean to believe it – and he _prayed_ that Sam was getting on with his life topside. So none of Alastair’s bullshit really even scratched the surface.

Then one day he’d started reflecting on all the ways that Dean had failed Sam, starting with that one time when Sammy had been nine months old and he’d burned himself on a camping stove because Dean hadn’t been paying attention. Ending with the day Dean lay there with his insides on the outside and Sam had to lay his shredded, stinking body to rest. And everything in between.

The demon blood? Wouldn’t have affected Sam if Dean had looked after him properly, had let him have a normal life, hadn’t dragged him back from Stanford. Or so Alastair told him, torturing him with a thousand lies and part-truths and possibly realities that had Sam turning slowly dark-side while Dean burned. Alastair promised him that one day Sam would walk through the door and he wouldn’t be an illusion, nor a soul to be tormented. He’d be a prince.

Dean believed very little of it – but the doubt was enough, especially coupled with continual excruciating pain. And then one day, a day no more special than any other, when Alastair had his small intestine in one hand, and the other buried in his chest cavity, the question had come and he’d hesitated.

It took longer, and a few more false starts, but one day Alastair found the winning formula.

“Dean, come see what I have for you.”

Warily, hoping once again that the sight of a suffering soul would be enough to give him strength to refuse, Dean allowed Alastair to make him whole and clean again, then took his hand and stepped off the rack. 

They walked the chambers, filled as always with eternal screams and pleas and curses. He saw demons tearing and clawing and slicing, raping in every possible sense. The stench of blood, viscera, burning flesh and filth was everywhere, a nauseating and palpable wall of stink. Only the very newest of souls were clothed, the ones who were still able to be degraded by being stripped naked or by soiling their clothes. Everyone got over those kinds of things pretty damned quickly once they’d felt their organs liquefy.

He himself felt strange in the jeans and tee that had appeared on his body. He had rarely been clothed for decades. 

Alastair walked them beyond, into the private chambers, and then led him through a doorway. In a bare, stone room there stood a wooden contraption with a woman strapped to it, and a table of instruments and weapons beside her. 

“Here,” said Alastair, caressing Dean’s shoulders and gently nudging him towards the woman.

Her long hair was covering her face, but Dean found his body responding to hers, which was lithe and toned, with full breasts. He’d been fucked more times than he could count, but it was never on his terms and he only enjoyed it on the really bad days, so it didn’t take much to get his dick interested.

He began to shake his head, appalled by the thoughts running through his mind, but then she turned towards him and her hair fell away from her features.

“Dean?”

His eyes widened as the distinctive accent pierced him and drew rage and hate from deep in the recesses of his memory.

“Bela.”

He hadn’t seen her all this time. He’d figured that although she’d only been a week or two ahead of him – probably a couple of years in Hell-time – she’d already climbed down off the rack. For someone like Bela, the first time the offer was made, she’d have jumped at it. 

Then again, perhaps that was reason enough for no demon to give her an offer.

“Dean, you’re here.” She sounded surprised, then almost nauseatingly hopeful. “You have to help me. Please!”

“Help you?” Dean stepped closer to her, shaking his head. “Wow. You really don’t get why I’m here.”

Maybe she thought he’d escaped his deal, and that he’d come to rescue her. She had no idea that he was this broken, twisted thing, stripped down to the bone by decades of suffering. With all too much time for the hate to build. 

Alastair was quiet, observing the scene breathlessly. There were no cajoling words, no promises or threats. Free will was always the point with these things.

“Untie me. We can...”

“What?” asked Dean. “Get out of here together? Sounds great. Do you have a map and flashlight, maybe a ‘get out of Hell free’ card?”

He trailed his fingers up her quivering stomach and between her breasts, over her throat until he cupped her jaw. Then he leaned close. “You took the Colt. It might have made a difference with Lilith and the Hellhounds, or at least been a protection for Sam, and you took that away.”

“I was trying to protect myself! I’m sorry,” she said, turning pleading eyes on him.  He’d only ever heard her once like this before, right as her deal came due. It was as if nothing had changed between that moment and this, which didn’t feel right somehow. But Hell was strange, particularly when it came to time, and maybe her few months had only felt like days. Who knew?

Dean smiled nastily. “For all the good it did you. Look at you. Nothing to protect you now...” He moved his hand back down, squeezing hard at her throat on the way and then pawing over her breast. God, he wanted to fuck her, the prissy bitch. 

“Is that what you want?” she asked as she glanced down at his hand and noticed his erection, always looking for the bargaining chip. “You can do it. You can do whatever you want, if you just let me go. I always wanted a piece of you, Dean. Remember when I said we should have angry sex?”

Dean did remember, vaguely, like he’d seen it in a movie or it had happened to someone else. That reality was so different to the pit; it was fuzzy and indistinct sometimes.

What he did remember clearly was that she’d played him, over and over again. She’d tricked him, lied to him, manipulated him, even tried to kill him. He didn’t care so much about that. But she’d also tried to kill Sammy. She’d have put a bullet in him as he slept, just to save her own sorry hide. Not only that, but her knowledge about deals and demons, including who held their contracts, could have actually helped save them all, if she’d cared to share instead of trying to bargain her way out. 

She deserved to be here. 

But him? He didn’t deserve to be. All the years on the rack and the continual mindfucks hadn’t been able to take away that simple fact. Oh, he’d made his own bed, that was true: he’d willingly taken the deal and would have done it a hundred times over to save his little brother. But he’d done nothing to earn his place in the pit, and it just wasn’t fair. 

She was supposed to be here and he wasn’t. He wanted to destroy something as the unjustness of it all beat a red pulse through his mind. 

“I don’t want anything you’d give me willingly,” spat Dean. “But you’re right about one thing: I can do whatever I want. Because you’re not going anywhere.”

Blindly, he reached behind himself onto the table of goodies, grasping the first thing his fingers came into contact with. He hissed as his fingers were sliced open, but fumbled for the handle and snatched it up.

When he saw that he was holding a cleaver, slick with his own blood, Dean paused. 

He wanted to hurt her, he did, and he sure as fuck wanted off the torture train that he’d endured for the last thirty years and hadn’t once deserved, but... Was he really going to hack into her? 

As he was wavering, he suddenly felt Alastair’s hand slide gently down his arm, then come to rest wrapped around his hand. As Alastair used the grip to slowly lower the weapon, Dean turned to face him, pained confusion clear in his eyes. 

“Here,” said Alastair softly. He held up a small but wickedly sharp straight razor with his other hand. “This is more your speed, boy. And you can do as little or as much as you want. I think you’re more of an artist than a butcher.”

Slowly, Dean let Alastair take away the cleaver and then he wrapped his hand around the razor when it was pressed almost lovingly into his palm. The warm, solid little weight felt good there. Right. Dean gripped it harder and turned back to Bela, who was whimpering and trying to keep the tears at bay.

At first, he just ran the fine edge over her skin in intricate little patterns, drawing thin lines of blood with the wickedly honed blade. It didn’t really even hurt her, although it did scare her; she lay rigid, barely daring to breathe lest the razor sliced deeper.

He found himself in kind of a trance, watching the pretty patterns emerge on her skin, the tiny beads of blood bubble on the surface. His name and the pleading note in her voice brought him back a little and he focussed on her eyes. When he saw the fear there – the realisation that she was trapped and at his not so benign mercy – he felt a low jolt of lust in his belly. It was only then that he noticed that he was still hard.

He didn’t think that it was for her body anymore, beautiful though it looked painted with red spirals. It was more that he finally had some control: _he_ was the one calling the shots, deciding who would be getting pain and how much. It was a dark and heady thing after enduring so much himself. 

Dean leaned forwards, allowing his dick to brush up against the rack, but let himself be satisfied with just that pressure for now. 

The small droplets of blood were tantalising, maddening. He wanted more. He wanted her to give him more. He bent over and licked a path over her stomach, lapping up the coppery taste and holding it in his mouth.

“Dean, please,” she begged. “You don’t want to do this.”

He stared coldly at her, blood smudged at the corner of his mouth. “What I want is to be topside with my brother. But since that ain’t exactly on the cards – and no thanks to you – then I’ll have to settle for this.”

He made his first real slice into the taut, trembling expanse of her belly, where the skin was soft and vulnerable. The perfectly honed blade sliced like passing through water, and he watched her skin and muscle part in its wake, blood welling up several seconds later like an afterthought.

She screamed, and he closed his eyes, savouring it like the melody of a guitar riff. 

He cut over and over again, her breasts and inner thighs and armpits – all the sensitive places. He varied the length and depth and speed, experimenting with what damage he could inflict and judging his success by the sounds torn out of her throat. 

When her body was a bloodied mess, he turned his attention to her perfect, unspoiled face. Even streaked with tears, mouth contorted in pain, she was stunning. 

He wanted to turn her into a different kind of masterpiece.

Dean cut slashes across both of her cheeks, the blood blooming like obscene blusher, then widened her mouth into a perpetual smile. All the while she squealed and thrashed, ruined chest heaving with agony and fear. He was distantly aware that he was rutting his cock up against the rack as he worked, but it wasn’t urgent or important: everything in his body was on a slow burn, nerve endings tingling and reawakening with power as he experienced something other than pain for the first time in decades.

In his periphery, Alastair paced silently, watching his work from all angles and smiling with delight and triumph.

Eventually, utterly unrecognisable, she was too weak and broken to make noise anymore or move at all beyond sluggish little shudders. Disappointed, Dean realised there was just one thrill left.

He tilted her head back with his left hand, exposing the gore-streaked but still unbroken line of her throat. Holding his breath, he drew the razor across her skin in one strong swipe. It was blunted from use now, but still keen enough to slice through her carotid – and even though she’d lost so much blood, there was enough left for an arterial spray that splashed across his features.

He didn’t even blink. 

It wasn’t until she’d spluttered her last and fallen completely still and silent that Dean realised he’d come. Everything about that culminating moment of cutting her throat had been so intense that the base physical sensation hadn’t even registered. 

Dean studied her lifeless body for a moment, cataloguing all the damage and reminding himself that _he’d_ done that. He’d felt almost trance-like at the time, the destruction bringing more peace to his soul than he’d have believed anything in Hell could.

He turned to face Alastair, aware of the blood soaking his hands and smattering his face and perversely hoping that the demon would be pleased. 

Alastair smiled at him, then clicked his fingers.

Dean whirled around at the gasped intake of breath, unsurprised to see Bela whole and pristine again. What was slightly shocking was that she was standing beside the rack, instead of lying strapped to it. 

She cracked her neck first to one side, and then to the other. 

“Well, that was...unimaginative.” She looked at Dean, grinning a little. “Hello, sexy.”

“Thank you for your help, my girl,” beamed Alastair, and she gave a little curtsy.

“You’re welcome. Now, about my little excursion topside...?”

“Soon, precious. You know it takes a lot of brownie points to get a pass upstairs. But you’re doing a great job.”

Although clearly annoyed, she forced herself to smile. “Well, just let me know when I can be of assistance again.”

“Oh, I will,” said Alastair, and Dean felt a shiver up his spine like insects crawling up the vertebrae. 

Bela tipped Dean a wink, her eyes flashing black. “See you soon, Dean. Maybe we can have some real fun.”

As she disappeared, Dean turned to Alastair. “She was playing me. Again.”

He didn’t know why he was surprised. He shouldn’t have been.

“Don’t feel bad, boy,” purred Alastair. “She was helping you, in a way. Didn’t you need an excuse to give yourself permission to make that first cut? And you’ve taken a big step. You’ve no idea how big... It’s cause for celebration, not recrimination. Unless you want to punish yourself for another decade or two? I’ll be disappointed, but I’ve got plenty of spare racks.”

It was probably a little strange that Alastair was offering for him to return when he’d spent so many years trying desperately to get Dean to accept his offer. Dean supposed that Alastair considered this a win, regardless of whatever choice he made next. Perhaps it was the first step towards getting himself a set of black eyes. 

He had no fucking intention of going back. 

“I have two conditions.”

Alastair raised his eyebrows slightly. “Really? And what are they, Dean?”

“First, you teach me everything. If I’m gonna do it, I wanna do it right.”

Alastair smiled warmly. “You’ll be my favourite little protégé.” He palmed Dean’s neck, sliding a thumb over his jaw and smearing the blood splashed there. “What’s the second condition, sweetheart?”

“I want her to practice on. She seemed disappointed in my lack of imagination, and I’d _really_ like to make it up to her.”

Alastair nodded. Bela was useful, but Dean had just turned the ignition on the Apocalypse.

“Anything for you, Dean.”

 

 

THE END


End file.
